Enough About Me

Have you heard? I’m writing a book. The whole thing is just exhausting. Yesterday I had a realization that two central characters don’t interact much, and I worried if that was a problem. And if that is a problem, I should probably write more scenes where they do talk, but that seems like a lot of work. The problem with writing a book is that I have to do the whole thing myself. Philip Roth isn’t going to come in and pinch hit a character description for me. This week I’ve been reading The History of Love by Nicole Krauss. No offense to her, but I’m not into Jewish Magical Realism. I mean, isn’t the state of Israel enough? I kid! Even though I didn’t like it, it still made me feel inadequate because my book is pretty boring. Or straightforward. Either way! This struggling creative process often leaves me feeling narcissistic. I mean, who cares but me? Last week, I was having a series of self-involved moments and then I saw Breaking Upwards. It’s written, directed, produced by and based on the failing relationship of this one guy. 

Reading, Live

Fun fact about reading: it’s a solitary experience. You can join a club or have an electronic machine do it for you, but basically, it’s just you and the words.

That’s why it’s so strange to go to a reading. I generally try to hear my favs speak as often as I know they’re speaking, but the experience is inevitably disappointing. I’ve usually already read what they’re reading and the Q&A after is always filled with stupid Qs, like why did you make this character male?*

I bring this all up because I saw Joseph O’Neill speak last night. He was everything I could want from an author: he kept his selection brief, answered a lot of questions and signed my books. But even in the best of circumstances, relating to a fictional character isn’t the same as relating to a person. Perhaps I should stop being disappointed that hearing a writer read his own words isn’t the same as catching up with a good friend.

*Actual question from a Jhumpa Lahiri reading.

Open Bruise

One of the things I like about trying new sports is being bad at them. At this point in my life, I generally do things I’m good at, incompetency sort of makes me feel like a child again. So on Sunday, when I went rock climbing, I took some comfort in my awfulness. I had trouble getting up the easiest pitch and even belaying was a challenge. The next day, my hands were so sore I could barely hold a pen.

I also banged myself up pretty bad. I hit my legs against the rock several times, a rope fell on me and I tripped. But this isn’t a complaint. I like showing off my black and blues. It’s perverse, but I’ve always been proud of my injuries. I have pictures of 15 year-old bruises from summer camp.

I’m not really sure why this is. Maybe it’s a fascination with my healing body or the chance to tell a story. I know I’m not alone in this, but it isn’t a universal pleasure. Other people hate getting hurt, and for good reason.

What do you think about black and blues? In my blogging experience, I know open threads only work if people read your site. So, my 23 Google Reader RSS'ers, I’m counting on you.

Whatev, Got Money?

I grew up comfortable. Since everyone around me was also comfortable, I didn’t realize how privileged I was. Even if my parents made me buy CDs myself, they offered me private lessons in anything I showed interest in, if not aptitude for. (See guitar lesson from seventh to tenth grade.) I don’t have college loans, and I know that makes me absurdly lucky. Right now, the idea of having $200,000 lying around for a liberal arts education is kind of astounding.

So now I’m writing a book and I make money in hours outside of 9 to 5. But even though I’m struggling now, I still feel like some type of success is inevitable. My parents set it up that way, and even I have trouble blaming them for that.

One of the things that everyone loves about New York is the diversity, but people only think about it in terms of food. The other day, my neighbor asked me where my shoes were from. I answered Urban Outfitters, and she commented that she had never heard of them. This girl and I have both lived in New York our whole lives, but we were raised in two different worlds.

The next day, I was walking in Manhattan and I passed Urban Outfitters. In the window, was a t-shirt that read, “Broke is the New Black.” See, it’s ironic. People who shop at Urban Outfitters aren’t really poor. Or black.

Perhaps it’s absurd to hinge a social realization on a chain store that no one admits to liking. And I know the inherent unfairness in society is an old observation. But I’m noticing.

Television's Peak

A Shout Out Loud

I’ve written about my sad tenure at Camp Taconic many times, and while it was the most traumatic camp I attended, it was not the only one.

After Taconic, I went to the Maine Teen Camp for two years. As the name implies, the camp was based in Maine and aimed at teens. For some reason, the camp had a lot of foreigners. I suppose wealthy French and Italian families thought a summer in New England was a chance for their teenagers to improve their English while waterskiing, and who could argue with an experience like that?

My first year there, Francesca Versace, niece of Gianni, was a camper. We had one conversation during a tennis tournament, but that was it. It so happened that was the summer her uncle died.

Versace’s murder was a big story, but only made it to the campers because of Francesca. When it happened, she was beginning a four day trip to Montreal. During evening announcements, the head counselor reported the news, as well as her family’s request to tell her themselves.

Her parents’ wish was understandable, if a little impractical. They were asking the camp to keep their teenage daughter in a bubble in Canada’s second largest city for three days. But somehow the counselors succeeded in making sure she never heard the radio or saw a newspaper. I can only assume Francesca enjoyed her visit to Montreal, blissfully ignorant of what had happened to her uncle.

The bus came back from Montreal during evening announcements, and joining our group was a family of Italians wearing silk scarves with a rental Jaguar. As the head counselor welcomed back the campers from Montreal and proceeded to talk about an upcoming fishing trip, we were all waiting for Francesca to learn what we already understood: her uncle was dead, murdered. Her parents told her right away. I know because Francesca let out a horrible scream.

March Madness

Every year around this time, there’s a big movement for college basketball players to get paid. There’s obviously a lot of money in NCAA hoops and the athletes aren’t seeing any of it.

But I don’t really care about that. The problem I have with the tournament of 64 is that for 80% of these kids, their lives will never be better than it is right now.

The athletes don’t know that yet. They still dream of the NBA or settling for abroad. They’ve been great players their whole lives and it’ll be a surprise when they aren’t fast enough or tall enough for the next level. Or worse, their bodies can’t handle the next level, and they’ll spend the next thirty years cursing their left knee for keeping them from their destiny.

Whenever I catch a game at a bar, I imagine the years of suicides these kids did for this moment. But for them, it was worth it. Most of us will never be as famous or as happy as these kids are now. But the rest of our lives won’t be a memory of something that happened when we were twenty.

I hope my life hasn’t peaked, and not just because I don’t know what the peak would be. I’d like to believe it will keep getting better. Last year at this time, I was really excited about what my life was going to become. Over the past year, I’ve never been happier to answer questions about what I do with my time, but I’ve also never been poorer.

A year ago, I had an idea about my life, and now I’m living it. The technical stuff is less fun than the concept, but at least there’s more to come.

Eyebrows of Understanding

As a woman and a person, I’m often asked to defend my fondness for alleged misogynist, Philip Roth. And here’s my answer:

“What’s a fourchette?” I asked. “The part of the glove between the fingers. Those small oblong pieces between the fingers, they’re die-cut along with the thumbs—those are the fourchettes. Today you’ve got a lot of underqualified people, probably don’t know half what I knew when I was five, and they’re making some pretty big decisions. A guy buying deerskin, which can run up to maybe three dollars and fifty cents a food for a garment grade, he’s buying this fine garment-grade deerskin to cut a little palm patch to go on a pair of ski gloves. I talked to him just the other day. A novelty part, runs about five inches by one inch, and he pays three fifty a foot where he could have paid a dollar fifty a food and come out a long, long ways ahead. You multiply this over a large order, you’re talking a hundred-thousand-dollar mistake, and he never knew it. He could have put a hundred grand in his pocket”

Whatever Roth or his characters think about women, he writes paragraphs like that. If he weren’t such a gifted novelist, he’d make a hell of a copy writer. He’s able to turn the technical into the existential. What’s a little casual sexism compared with a good paragraph on gloves?

Untitled Things I Hate

• My mood right now.

• Artists and writers who think they’re too good for naming a project. Actually, they’re too lazy. Naming things is difficult and diminishing, but this is a keyword age. Without titles, your work gets lost in the e-ether. No one’s creation is above the semantics of titles.

• This quote from a blog Google Reader recommended:

We all know I can’t read fiction anymore but I hope I always retain my passion for writing it.

Actually, that’s a pretty succinct explanation for the problem facing the publishing industry. But why would anyone like writing without enjoying reading? I mean, other than complete narcissism?

• Speaking of narcissism, I hate self-promoting Gchat, Twitter and Facebook statuses. I’m your e-friend, not your mom.

What’s Writing A Book Like?

The best way I can explain my writing process is through my saving process. I write a scene and back up that scene in a matching google doc. In google docs, I have one folder for Raronauer’ed, The Novel, and in that folder, 11 other folders for the 10 chapters of the book and another folder for the not yet included documents. The not yet included documents are also filed in the chapter that they will appear in so I don’t forget where they belong. Each chapter has its own document on my hard drive and in my google docs, which I periodically update after I’ve edited a scene. The entire manuscript is too large for google docs, so I save that on a flash drive. Whatever happens, I have about eight ways to reconstruct this book. It may seem neurotic, but I don’t want my book to end up a sad story about a spilled Nalgene bottle.

I mention this not just because it’s tedious, but because it’s also indicative of how tedious the book writing process is. There’s a lot to remember, save, edit and reread. My book won’t be exceptionally long, but just having written as many words as I have is a physical act of sorts. That’s not to say all the words make sense, just to say that there are a lot of them.

Vermont is ok. I miss reading on the subway. Since I’ve been here, I’ve only reread Jhumpa Lahiri stories when I feel like crying and about 20 pages of David Remnick’s biography on Muhammad Ali. And that’s the least of what I miss about New York. I haven’t seen Clint in forever!

Last weekend, a new friend and I went to Burlington and stayed with friend of hers from college. In the morning, her friend, his friends, my new friend and I made pancakes. I’m glad I’m not too entrenched in my life to crash on a stranger’s couch and share a pleasant breakfast with people I’ll probably never see again.

For a long time when acquaintances asked me what my book was about, I made a jerk off motion with my hand. Now I have sentences about it, so that’s progress. I’m also doing my first ever reading tonight of two scenes from the book, each of which are saved in six places.

Publishing is fucked, but the economy is fucked too. If this whole project doesn’t work out, I figure I’m making the most of my time untilWeb 3.0.

What’s Going on With Me

I was using my laundry bag as a purse and I washed my copy of Paris Review Interviews. It’s hanging on a piece of dental floss I set up between my chair and desk. I miss New York. Well not the city, because what’s to miss in New York in February? I miss people, a person, apartments, beds, a dog. I missed my roommate’s show and Junot Diaz speaking in Westchester. I’m cut off from Facebook, and now my voyeuristic procrastinations are reduced to Twitter, Flickr and Kodak galleries. I find this sad, too. I’m planning a trip to Florida to see my grandmother that’s the equivalent of geriatric catnip. Writing a book is not at all like coming up with the phrase “geriatric catnip,” which is too bad because I am good with those phrases. I’m still figuring out how to write about the physical with any elegance. I recommend the Slate Audio Book Club for all literary nerds.

Under 140 Characters

A tweet is just the amount of information people are willing to make public.

Fun Reading

There’s a lot to criticize in the memoir genre, but for a willfully naïve moment, let’s commend the dual courage to write a book about one’s past. The first courage is obvious: You have to reveal your secrets. The second is faith in your narrative.

We all have fun anecdotes about running into someone on the train or falling in love, but most of life doesn’t fit into a storyline. It’s easy to criticize “characters” from memoirs as flat, but in real life, a lot of people are flat. The honest and successful memoirist has to overcome the narrative failings of existence. This memoirist also has to have an incredible amount faith in her story—that the details of her life can also be symbols and that frankly, that her time has been interesting.

I’m using the pronoun “she” because the finest example of this is Alison Bechdel, the author of the graphic novel

9/12

So I’m rereading Netherland, Joseph O’Neill’s “post-9/11” masterpiece. I agree with the noun, but I’m not sure I understand the adjective. As Dwight Garner pointed out, all books are post-9/11 now. Indeed the attacks happened more than seven years ago, and a lot of books have been written since.

Where was I that fateful Tuesday? I was in my first weeks of college, lacking friends and perspective. I got that 9/11 was a big deal because my fifth day of classes were canceled and later my English professor made us write in our journals about it. But I didn’t realize then I was in the chasm of pre-9/11 and post-9/11, which in retrospect, was the hardest part of the whole attacks for anyone who wasn’t directly affected.

I suppose there is a difference in our mindsets before and after that fateful day, I just don’t know what it is. But terrorism is sort of like the threat of a car accident: a danger we do our best to avoid but ultimately might be out of our powers to stop. “Post-9/11” is just a new existentialism.

You Know That Book Everyone Was Talking About Twenty Years Ago? I Just Read It

I can generally how I feel about a book about whether I look forward to the subway ride. While reading Bonfire of the Vanities, I considered playing Pong on the train.

That’s harsh, but fans of Bonfire of the Vanities must agree that the book is misanthropic and too long. The book picked up in the end, but there were characters and descriptions of 80s couture I could do without. That’s not to say Wolfe is wrong in his descriptions of egomaniacal bankers and self-righteous lawyers who take their wives’ aging as a personal betrayal, it’s just that I don’t want to hear about it. Human nature is shit, but why dwell on that?

My ex-step-cousin (my Aunt’s ex-husband’s son) once called Bonfire of the Vanities his favorite book. And no offense to him, I don’t see how a book like that can be a favorite. I enjoyed the first and last two hundred pages and I’m glad I read it, but B of the V was kind of like Atlas Shrugged for New Yorkers. They’re both engaging and thick books with writing that gets the job done, but ultimately the characters are just symbols. And at the end of Bonfire of the Vanity, but what’s the moral of the story? That Hobbes was right?

I Dream of Obama ...

The other night I had a dream with Barack Obama. We talked politics for a bit, and then he asked how my bf was doing. So considerate! What do you think it means that in my subconscious Barack Obama cares about my personal life?

Anyway, if you can’t get enough of Obama, here are some retro block quotes about him.

When Living In The City Is Hard

When a homeless woman enters your subway car asking for money: There was a fire, which destroyed everything, everything and she her husband, who is blind, worked so hard for, and now they have three kids to support, but no money—the fire destroyed everything—and she prays for you, even you, who got on the subway to go home to an apartment that hasn’t burned down and maybe read twenty pages of a used book you bought on Amazon, which is

And on a Personal Note ...

Today I went to the gynecologist. Covering the metal stirrups were NuvaRing cozies. In case you don’t know, NuvaRing does the exact same thing as any other vaginal ring, but it’s a name brand, so it’s more expensive.

When I asked the physician’s assistant about it, she said, “They’ll advertise anywhere.” No medical friend, they’ll sell advertising anywhere.

Some of My Dreams Are Superficial Too

In twenty days, I leave urban Brooklyn for rural Vermont, where I will be placed in a snowed-in isolation chamber to work on Raronauer’ed, The Novel (working title) for the month of February. There’s some hope I will finish the book during this month. After that, the hope continues that I will immediately sell the publishing and film rights and then not have to worry about money or bugs for some time.

In reality, I probably won’t finish the book next month. Even when I do finish it, process of finding an agent will likely be ego-shattering. And after that, that agent needs to find a publisher. And after being published, the book needs to be reviewed, hopefully well.

Have you read the New York Times Book Review lately? There are so many authors who have made it through all these steps, sometimes several times, and I’ve never heard of them. If I’m lucky, I’ll become a published writer most people haven’t heard of, which means I need a job.

When I come back from Vermont in March, I’ll be approaching the one year anniversary of semi-unemployment. Whether or not my book is done, I need to get serious about finding a tenable employment.

I’m not sure what this will be yet. Suggestions are welcome in the comments. But if looks or disposition weren’t an issue, I’d like to be an L.L. Bean model. I love the outdoors and Labrador Retrievers. I’ve written about catalog models before, at the time dismissing them as people trying to live a dream. But if modeling weren’t your dream, posing for L.L. Bean would be an easy way to make money, plus in non-modeling terms, you’d be very attractive. I mean, between being mediocre looking and teaching The Great Gatsby to uninterested 11th graders and being a low-level model, which would you choose?

Quick Question

How many times is the New York Times going to pretend that mustaches are coming back and praise Michelle Obama’s personal style? [link,